Write the Script for the Creator, Not the Brand

We recently scripted a run of short creator videos for a client launching a new service. Five creators, each filming several short pieces at home. The first drafts read beautifully and would have performed badly, because they sounded like the brand talking through someone else's mouth.

The whole value of creator content is that it does not sound like an advertisement. Viewers trust it because it sounds like a person describing an experience. Brand-voice copy delivered by a creator is the worst of both: it reads as an ad, but with less polish than an ad.

Give them a spine, not a speech

The scripts that worked set out the structure rather than every word: the problem the viewer recognises, the moment things changed, and one clear thing to do next. Within that, the creator was told to say it the way they would say it to a friend. We wrote the lines we needed exactly, the product name, the offer, and left the rest loose.

Plan the practical details for them

Creators are not a production crew, and the things that make footage usable are easy to overlook at home. So the brief did that thinking for them: two looks, one indoors and one outdoors, and three different shirts across the set so the videos read as different days. Plain colours, no logos. A photo of each location before filming. Around thirty seconds each, vertical.

Those constraints are not about control. They are what turns five separate phone recordings into a campaign that looks deliberate.

Leave room for the unexpected

The best takes often include a line the creator improvised, a reaction, a joke, a phrase no copywriter would have written. A tight script prevents those moments. A clear structure with loose wording invites them, and they are usually the part the audience remembers.